Officials

Offical

Name: Campbell, Kurt

Current Position: Previous Assistant Secretary

United States policy toward the troubled and perilous region of East Asia–home of volatile conflicts between North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, and the military junta of Burma and its own people–is now the province of a highly esteemed academic and international relations specialist, Dr. Kurt Campbell. Campbell was confirmed by the Senate on June 26, 2009, as the new Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Perhaps a harbinger of political conflicts to come, conservative Republican Kansas Senator Sam Brownback had put a hold on Campbell’s nomination as a way to press the Obama administration to consider imposing more restrictive economic sanctions on the military dictatorship ruling Burma (also called Myanmar).

Born in 1957, Campbell earned a B.A. in Science, Technology, and Public Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, a certificate in music and political philosophy from the University of Yerevan in Soviet Armenia, and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University in 1985. As an officer in the U.S. Navy, Campbell served as an assistant on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and between 1987 and 1995 as a reserve naval officer in a special Chief of Naval Operations advisory unit in the Pentagon. Early in his career, he worked as a stringer for The New York Times Magazine in southern Africa.

A Democrat, Campbell was Hillary Clinton’s chief adviser on Asian affairs during her campaign for the presidency in 2008. Since 2004, he has contributed more than $28,000 to Democratic candidates and causes, including $6,900 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, followed by $4,600 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign after the former’s withdrawal from the Democratic nomination contest. He had previously donated $4,100 to Senator Clinton’s 2006 re-election campaign.